By Meera Banerjee 
Mumbai, September 6: The city woke up today to a mix of rain, drums, and tension. It’s Anant Chaturdashi, the last day of Ganeshotsav, when lakhs of Mumbaikars take to the streets to bid farewell to their beloved Bappa. The processions are as grand as ever with the Lalbaugcha Raja drawing huge crowds but this year’s visarjan carries an extra edge. The skies are pouring, police are on their toes after a terror scare, and the sheer number of devotees has pushed Mumbai into a state of delicate balance.
The Skies Refuse To Let Up
Rain has been falling on and off since early morning. The IMD’s yellow alert hangs over the city, warning of heavy showers not just in Mumbai but also across Thane, Palghar, Raigad, and the Pune ghats. The timing couldn’t be trickier: most major mandals schedule their grand visarjan processions for today, and waterlogging has already been reported near some immersion points.
Still, it takes more than rain to dampen the mood of a Mumbai Ganesh visarjan. Families carrying household idols braved slippery roads with umbrellas in one hand and clay idols in the other. At Lalbaug, the queues around the Raja stretched endlessly, drenched devotees breaking into chants every few minutes. There’s a strange joy in watching people refuse to let the weather dictate their faith.
Security On A Knife-Edge
The bigger cloud, though, isn’t in the sky it’s the security threat that came in last night. A WhatsApp message warning about “human bombs” during visarjan processions rattled the police establishment. Whether it’s credible or not is still unclear, but Mumbai Police aren’t taking any chances.
According to officials quoted in The Economic Times, every immersion point is under watch. Bomb squads and anti-terror units are patrolling sensitive spots. Senior officers admit the message could well be a hoax, but with lakhs on the streets, the margin for error is zero. “High alert” isn’t just a phrase this year; it’s the city’s reality.
The Biggest Deployment In Years
Numbers tell the story of just how seriously the city is taking this. Nearly 18,000 police personnel and 3,000 officers are on duty, as reported by Navbharat Times. The force has leaned on technology too AI-powered systems to track crowd movement, drones flying overhead, CCTV cameras feeding live updates into control rooms.
For a city where every inch of road fills up during visarjan, this kind of monitoring feels both reassuring and slightly unnerving. Some volunteers at Girgaon Chowpatty joked that Bappa himself might be under surveillance this year. But the seriousness shows police are visibly checking bags, stopping suspicious vehicles, and keeping barricades tighter than usual.
A City Choked With Processions
The scale of immersion today is staggering. More than 6,500 mandal idols and around 1.5 lakh household idols are expected to enter the sea, according to police estimates shared with The Economic Times. That means processions snaking through every neighborhood, traffic diversions at nearly every major junction, and commuters left scrambling.
From Lalbaug to Dadar, Byculla to Girgaon, entire stretches of road are blocked off. Traffic advisories had gone out well in advance, but for those caught unprepared, the city is a maze of barricades and one-way detours. BEST buses are struggling to keep to schedules, and locals say trains are more crowded than usual. This is Mumbai at its most chaotic and its most resilient.
Why This Year Feels Uneasy
Ganesh visarjan has always been Mumbai’s grand carnival part devotion, part street theatre, part logistical marathon. But this year feels different. The rain, the security scare, and the sheer density of processions have made the city jittery. Conversations on the street keep circling back to the WhatsApp threat. Parents are holding their children a little closer in the crowd. Even mandal organisers admit the tension in private, though on stage they keep spirits high with chants and music.
And yet, there’s also the unmistakable Mumbai stubbornness. Volunteers handing out raincoats and biscuits, civic workers clearing drains in the middle of downpours, strangers offering to carry someone’s idol when they stumble. Faith and fellowship continue to carry the day, even when circumstances try to pull it down.
The Larger Picture
What today underlines is how fragile big public gatherings have become. Climate unpredictability is no longer theory a yellow alert on visarjan day is now reality. Security threats, real or fake, continue to exploit the soft spots of crowded festivals. And as AI begins to quietly monitor people in the name of safety, questions about privacy and civil liberties will follow.
But those debates can wait. For now, Mumbai is focused on giving Bappa his farewell. By late night, when the last idol disappears into the waves and the city exhales, there will be relief, exhaustion, and pride that once again, despite every hurdle, the visarjan went on.
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- Meera Banerjeehttps://hindustanherald.in/author/meera/
- Meera Banerjeehttps://hindustanherald.in/author/meera/
- Meera Banerjeehttps://hindustanherald.in/author/meera/
- Meera Banerjeehttps://hindustanherald.in/author/meera/
Rajiv Menon 
Ananya Sharma